6 ms·

We were just talking about the need for "better whiteboards that aren't SmartBoards(TM)" at work. Whiteboards can be incredible collaboration tools, but captur

by bane 12y ago

We were just talking about the need for "better whiteboards that aren't SmartBoards(TM)" at work. Whiteboards can be incredible collaboration tools, but capturing that back out to the team can be tough. Coincidentally, we've also started giving out Surface Pro's as work computers and to the person they absolutely love them. As always, software will be the problem, so if the software is well thought out this could be awesome. edit thanks for the downvote? what did you disagree with?

dworin 12y ago
I agree about software - one cool thing is that there are a number of apps where the traditional PC or tablet is actually a sub-optimal user experience and they've focused on them - for instance, Stormboard is in their demo, and it works OK on PC, but would be a lot better on something like this.
- bane 12y ago
  Yeah absolutely. For a while it was a struggle to get whiteboards where I work. Our facilities manager wondered what the trouble was since all our machines could connect to the projectors that were in every room and we could just show slides. Turns out they had fundamentally misunderstood the mode of communication that whiteboards enable and how it's different than slides.
  - webjprgm 12y ago
    Similar for scratch paper. Whiteboard is just a collaborative version, but in both cases you are working out incomplete ideas to arrive at a sketch of a plan. It is only necessary to capture the final plan. <rant> On that note, here's a rant about iPad used for scratch paper: I sometimes try to use an iPad for scratch paper but it doesn't really work out the way I want. Requirements: - Scratch paper doesn't need to persist very long, just while I'm still in the middle of working it out. - The final result needs to last until I'm done taking the actions it describes. - It needs to be easy to find the scratch papers for projects I'm currently working on. They need to still be editable in that case too. What I get instead is: - "Notes" organization with multiple pages in a notebook and folders, but the interface to organize and navigate between these isn't very good. I often don't bother to organize because of that. It also makes it hard to remember which notebook has the thing I want. - Pencil and paper is still better than finger or passive stylus due to palm detection, line width, accuracy, and the need to zoom and scroll due to those problems. An active stylus can help but I don't currently own one. - Too many choices of software, so I stick with the one I have now instead of buying them all to try them all. None of them sound like what I want from their descriptions. - On active styluses, same problem. Too expensive to buy them all and try them. Reviews focus on the wrong things. It is either talking about writing words for a note, in which case the reviews usually say it doesn't matter what features the stylus has, or it is about art. I want to draw simple sketches of flowcharts, UI, etc. which is kinda like drawing art but not so picky about certain features. - Partly due to organization issues, I tend to not delete old scratch notes from the iPad. Even something email-like with an "Archive" button or moving to a "Read Mail" folder would help. - Most of the software that I've tried does not easily sync with a PC/Mac. It might have an export to PDF / PNG option but that is a one-way export. - I do not want a subscription cloud service for my scratch paper notes. I don't want a subscription cloud service at all, thank you very much. </rant>
    - bane 12y ago
      It doesn't answer all of your gripes, but I've gotten tons of mileage out of my Galaxy Note 3 and Papyrus. Yeah, it organizes things into notes and notebooks, but I usually ignore that and just email myself the notes I've just taken as a PDF for later review...and that seems to work pretty well for most cases...and I get to integrate those notes into the rest of my on-computer organization scheme.
    - dworin 12y ago
      I use onenote on my surface for this, although I've still found myself going back to real notepads, mostly because the battery life is better.
stephengillie 12y ago
Thinking back to college, a fully-drawn whiteboard is only somewhat useful. What's most important is the presentation - what the person is saying while they draw, the order the drawings are made, and how they connect. The real value is in the presentation. When you get a picture of the whiteboard, it doesn't just give you that static info. It helps you remember the presentation the way that a photo of home brings back the smells of home. But a dozen minutes of meeting that record someone's whiteboard presentation, is a lot to store for later review. How do we automate the pulling of important, informative parts out of a video?
- mscman 12y ago
  > The real value is in the presentation. This is true sometimes, but if it's a design discussion and you're whiteboarding how something should be laid out, or even steps of what's completed and what's left, just a snapshot of the final state of the whiteboard is tremendously useful. It prevents the need for another person jotting down everything that was written up on the board.
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    A time-lapse would be great as well.
    - stephengillie 12y ago
      So a GIF (or PNG) of the time lapse, as well as a still image of the final frame?
      - seanflyon 12y ago
        I was thinking of something with a slider so you can find that diagram someone drew in the middle of a discussion last week.
        stephengillie 12y ago
dblohm7 12y ago
Curious, what is it about SmartBoards that you don't like? I've never used one, but I work in the city where their HQ is located and know some people who work there.
- GeneralMayhem 12y ago
  They're buggy, gimmicky, overpriced pieces of crap. Or at least the models a few years ago were, they may have gotten better in the meantime. SMART makes a ton of money in the education market, and we had about a dozen at my high school. The touch controls aren't sensitive or precise enough, the model of projecting onto a separate touchscreen means that it has to be recalibrated constantly, and the only software (SMART's drawing software) that takes advantage of the functionality has almost no features and still manages to have a horrible UI. No teacher used it for more than two or three lessons.
  - bduerst 12y ago
    The only time I've ever used them was in an education setting and even then the people who owned them said the smartboards were not worth the hassle.
  - qzcx 12y ago
    hmm. Back in my high school days (about 6 years ago), my physics professor had one in his classroom and he used it for every lecture. It was good for him because he could do page after page of whiteboarding and then send us to pdf to review. Of course this is pretty impressive 6 years ago. If they haven't changed at all since then, I wouldn't use them, I would just project a touchscreen computer and use a stylus.
- bane 12y ago
  To be honest, I think the last time I really tried to use one was so long ago I don't even remember what the trouble was. People at my org who've tried to use one more recently all say that they "work better when you're part of a very large all SmartBoard ecosystem" which I take to mean getting things like the right markers and such are easier. Funny enough, an old predecessor to all this treated the board surface kind of like a large scanner face, when you were ready to "capture" the board, you hit a button and a large arm scanned the board and printed out a black and white copy of the board contents onto a piece of thermal paper. In a few seconds you could print off a copy for everybody in the room. From the age of paper sadly, but definitely simple and useful.
yellowapple 12y ago
The company I currently work for uses whiteboards, but simply snaps a photo of the whiteboard after a meeting/discussion/etc. and pushes it to some shared location. Works well enough for our purposes.
tinalumfoil 12y ago
I have the same opinion of this as I did about the original Microsoft Surface [0]. Basically, it looks like a really cool toy, but is far too expensive to be used in any real situation. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BWJvQD3nT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BWJvQD3nT4

by bane 12y ago

dworin 12y ago

I agree about software - one cool thing is that there are a number of apps where the traditional PC or tablet is actually a sub-optimal user experience and they've focused on them - for instance, Stormboard is in their demo, and it works OK on PC, but would be a lot better on something like this.

bane 12y ago
Yeah absolutely. For a while it was a struggle to get whiteboards where I work. Our facilities manager wondered what the trouble was since all our machines could connect to the projectors that were in every room and we could just show slides. Turns out they had fundamentally misunderstood the mode of communication that whiteboards enable and how it's different than slides.
- webjprgm 12y ago
  Similar for scratch paper. Whiteboard is just a collaborative version, but in both cases you are working out incomplete ideas to arrive at a sketch of a plan. It is only necessary to capture the final plan. <rant> On that note, here's a rant about iPad used for scratch paper: I sometimes try to use an iPad for scratch paper but it doesn't really work out the way I want. Requirements: - Scratch paper doesn't need to persist very long, just while I'm still in the middle of working it out. - The final result needs to last until I'm done taking the actions it describes. - It needs to be easy to find the scratch papers for projects I'm currently working on. They need to still be editable in that case too. What I get instead is: - "Notes" organization with multiple pages in a notebook and folders, but the interface to organize and navigate between these isn't very good. I often don't bother to organize because of that. It also makes it hard to remember which notebook has the thing I want. - Pencil and paper is still better than finger or passive stylus due to palm detection, line width, accuracy, and the need to zoom and scroll due to those problems. An active stylus can help but I don't currently own one. - Too many choices of software, so I stick with the one I have now instead of buying them all to try them all. None of them sound like what I want from their descriptions. - On active styluses, same problem. Too expensive to buy them all and try them. Reviews focus on the wrong things. It is either talking about writing words for a note, in which case the reviews usually say it doesn't matter what features the stylus has, or it is about art. I want to draw simple sketches of flowcharts, UI, etc. which is kinda like drawing art but not so picky about certain features. - Partly due to organization issues, I tend to not delete old scratch notes from the iPad. Even something email-like with an "Archive" button or moving to a "Read Mail" folder would help. - Most of the software that I've tried does not easily sync with a PC/Mac. It might have an export to PDF / PNG option but that is a one-way export. - I do not want a subscription cloud service for my scratch paper notes. I don't want a subscription cloud service at all, thank you very much. </rant>
  - bane 12y ago
    It doesn't answer all of your gripes, but I've gotten tons of mileage out of my Galaxy Note 3 and Papyrus. Yeah, it organizes things into notes and notebooks, but I usually ignore that and just email myself the notes I've just taken as a PDF for later review...and that seems to work pretty well for most cases...and I get to integrate those notes into the rest of my on-computer organization scheme.
  - dworin 12y ago
    I use onenote on my surface for this, although I've still found myself going back to real notepads, mostly because the battery life is better.

stephengillie 12y ago

Thinking back to college, a fully-drawn whiteboard is only somewhat useful. What's most important is the presentation - what the person is saying while they draw, the order the drawings are made, and how they connect. The real value is in the presentation. When you get a picture of the whiteboard, it doesn't just give you that static info. It helps you remember the presentation the way that a photo of home brings back the smells of home. But a dozen minutes of meeting that record someone's whiteboard presentation, is a lot to store for later review. How do we automate the pulling of important, informative parts out of a video?

mscman 12y ago
> The real value is in the presentation. This is true sometimes, but if it's a design discussion and you're whiteboarding how something should be laid out, or even steps of what's completed and what's left, just a snapshot of the final state of the whiteboard is tremendously useful. It prevents the need for another person jotting down everything that was written up on the board.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  A time-lapse would be great as well.
  - stephengillie 12y ago
    So a GIF (or PNG) of the time lapse, as well as a still image of the final frame?
    - seanflyon 12y ago
      I was thinking of something with a slider so you can find that diagram someone drew in the middle of a discussion last week.
      - stephengillie 12y ago

dblohm7 12y ago

Curious, what is it about SmartBoards that you don't like? I've never used one, but I work in the city where their HQ is located and know some people who work there.

GeneralMayhem 12y ago
They're buggy, gimmicky, overpriced pieces of crap. Or at least the models a few years ago were, they may have gotten better in the meantime. SMART makes a ton of money in the education market, and we had about a dozen at my high school. The touch controls aren't sensitive or precise enough, the model of projecting onto a separate touchscreen means that it has to be recalibrated constantly, and the only software (SMART's drawing software) that takes advantage of the functionality has almost no features and still manages to have a horrible UI. No teacher used it for more than two or three lessons.
- bduerst 12y ago
  The only time I've ever used them was in an education setting and even then the people who owned them said the smartboards were not worth the hassle.
- qzcx 12y ago
  hmm. Back in my high school days (about 6 years ago), my physics professor had one in his classroom and he used it for every lecture. It was good for him because he could do page after page of whiteboarding and then send us to pdf to review. Of course this is pretty impressive 6 years ago. If they haven't changed at all since then, I wouldn't use them, I would just project a touchscreen computer and use a stylus.
bane 12y ago
To be honest, I think the last time I really tried to use one was so long ago I don't even remember what the trouble was. People at my org who've tried to use one more recently all say that they "work better when you're part of a very large all SmartBoard ecosystem" which I take to mean getting things like the right markers and such are easier. Funny enough, an old predecessor to all this treated the board surface kind of like a large scanner face, when you were ready to "capture" the board, you hit a button and a large arm scanned the board and printed out a black and white copy of the board contents onto a piece of thermal paper. In a few seconds you could print off a copy for everybody in the room. From the age of paper sadly, but definitely simple and useful.

yellowapple 12y ago

The company I currently work for uses whiteboards, but simply snaps a photo of the whiteboard after a meeting/discussion/etc. and pushes it to some shared location. Works well enough for our purposes.

tinalumfoil 12y ago

I have the same opinion of this as I did about the original Microsoft Surface [0]. Basically, it looks like a really cool toy, but is far too expensive to be used in any real situation. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BWJvQD3nT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BWJvQD3nT4